The Boy Who Could See Demons

by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

  ‘What about this one?’ I recall myself saying, holding another black dress against me. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  ‘Everything you own is black,’ she said, fishing through my wardrobe. ‘Why not anything red? Or orange or even yellow?’

  ‘Are those my colours?’

  She flicked her eyes at me. ‘Your skin tone is olive, your hair and eyes are dark brown.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

  She found a white dress lurking in my shoe rack. ‘Aha! Here we go.’

  I glanced it over, noticing the price tag still hanging from the label. A Stella McCartney, bought on a whim. Back then, my motto was, ‘If you can live without it, live without it – unless it’s Stella.’ These days, I’ve trimmed the motto down a little. Poppy thrust the dress against me.

  ‘This is it,’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘It’s far too tight.’

  More eye-rolling. ‘Mother, you’re skinny. Flaunt it, OK?’

  And right as her precocious words chime in my ears, I spy something at the bottom of the box. Something I hadn’t even remembered packing. A white puddle. I reach in and pull it out, noticing the label. It is the same dress. I didn’t wear it the night that she insisted upon it. It wasn’t me, I’d argued.

  I strip down to my underwear and slip the dress over my head. Cut elegantly below the knee, one-sleeved, with a modestly straight neckline just under my collarbone and a discreet gold zip at the side, the dress still fits perfectly. And it still isn’t me.

  At seven o’clock a car horn sounds outside. I grab my briefcase and talisman and run outside to find Michael standing outside the taxi. He is wearing a navy suit and a clean white shirt without a tie, his hair combed back. He is holding the car door open.

  ‘Evening,’ he says.

  I pause, certain that I’ve chosen the wrong outfit.

  ‘You look lovely, Dr Molokova,’ he said, giving me a small bow.

  I smile back at him and jump into the back seat.

  At the Grand Opera House I tell Michael to go ahead and find our seats while I search for a member of staff to take me backstage to ensure that Alex is all right. I spot Jojo’s red head bobbing amongst the hordes in the foyer and shout her name. She turns at the sound, and I wave.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I asked once we’d found a corner close to the stairwell. ‘With Alex, I mean.’

  Her face looks strained. ‘Absolutely fine with Alex,’ she says. ‘Only we’re a man down. Well, a girl, really. Katie, who plays Hamlet? I mean, thank the Lord we’ve an understudy to fill her shoes, but can you imagine? On opening night?’

  ‘What happened?’

  She presses a hand against her forehead. ‘Had an accident, poor thing. Broke her leg in six places falling down a flight of steps. Anyway, we’re sorted now. And there’s a casting director from London here tonight. Roz Mardell, you heard of her?’

  I shake my head. She tisks in disapproval.

  ‘Roz is casting for the new Tarantino Hamlet, can you imagine?’ She fans herself. ‘I think Alex has an excellent chance.’

  ‘You do?’ I feel a sudden mixture of excitement and dread. Excitement at the opportunity this would afford him, but dread at what impact it might have on his emotions.

  ‘You know his aunt Bev is here?’ she tells me quickly. ‘She’s upstairs in a box if you want to say hello.’

  A teenage boy in a black T-shirt bearing the REALLY TALENTED KIDS logo waves at Jojo from the other side of the foyer.

  ‘I better go,’ she says. ‘You look beautiful in that dress, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, watching her squeeze her way to the other side of the foyer before I headed up the stairs to my seat in the Grand Circle.

  Along the crescent of filled seats I spot Michael’s blond head. I inch my way across handbags and legs and find my seat next to him just as the lights began to dim.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he whispers, leaning towards me. I catch his smell – the lime tang of aftershave, turf, and macadamia nuts – and forget why he should be asking me if everything is all right. I smile and nod, tugging the hem of my skirt self-consciously across my knees.

  The curtain rises to the sound of a drumbeat from the orchestra pit. A soft mist brushes across the stage, where a figure holding a gun is wandering in a state of fear.

  ‘Who’s there?’ a boy’s voice calls. Another figure backs its way across the stage in the direction of the boy, a hand drawn to a holster at its waist. The figures collide.

  ‘Bernardo?’

  ‘Francisco?’

  ‘What are you doing out here in the dead of night?’

  ‘Taking over guard duty from you, you plonker. It’s past midnight.’

  ‘It is?’

  Another figure crosses the stage, a boy I recognise instantly as Alex. Dressed in a camouflage suit, his brown hair slicked into an old-fashioned side parting and his feet in heavy black boots, he no longer resembles the nervous, timid boy with whom I have been consulting. Instead, he walks with an air of authority, and when he speaks, his voice is deeper, shot through with command. A wind whips up the mist around him, the sound of strings rising up from the orchestra pit.

  ‘Francisco – where are you off to?’

  A moment’s banter. ‘Bernardo’s on guard duty. Good night.’

  A second figure appears behind Alex, thumping his hand heavily on his shoulder to make him jump.

  ‘Marcellus!’ Alex shouts. ‘Speak first, next time!’

  Marcellus raises his gun to indicate he is armed, then nods at Bernardo. ‘You’re more on edge than usual, Bernardo. Has the ghost been spotted?’

  Bernardo shakes his head. ‘Not tonight.’

  Marcellus turns to Alex. ‘Horatio says he won’t believe what we’ve seen ’til he’s seen it himself. Isn’t that right, Horatio?’

  Alex pulls the strap of a rifle over his head and sets the weapon in foliage by his feet. He settles down as if to sleep. ‘No such thing as ghosts, you idiots.’

  ‘There is,’ Bernardo says, crouching to gather leaves and twigs together before creating a fire – or, in this case, a strip of red material blown upwards by a small wind machine, lit from behind. ‘We saw it last night, just before one, looks just like the King.’

  Marcellus crouched, too. ‘It is the King.’

  From the corner of my eye I see Michael turning to me, half his face in darkness, the other illuminated by the spotlight on stage. He throws me a smile in praise of Alex, which I return. The worry that had tugged at my heart on behalf of Alex – this being his first public performance, and at a time when his private life was anything but calm – is subsiding now, and at the sound of a slow piano melody rung out in the orchestra pit, a familiar song rose up in my head. Poppy’s song, the one she was composing the night she died. My mouth turns dry. The events on the stage before me slide into the periphery of my thoughts, Poppy’s face rising back into my mind.

  But instead of recalling her by my side, instructing me on the rudiments of fashion and laughing at my decision to wear that top with those shoes, I feel her absence keenly.

  ‘There it is!’ I hear Alex shout. ‘A ghost! Oh, it harrows me with fear and wonder.’

  My thoughts enter a territory that is fenced off with rolling barbed wire, with armed guards at various posts keeping trespassers at a considerable distance. I ignore them, crossing beyond the familiar planes of my memories with Poppy to the day I learned I was pregnant. Poppy’s father was an acquaintance from medical school: Daniel Shearsman, an American researcher spending a semester at University College London. We were never involved, at least not beyond a memorable weekend in Switzerland which started off in the lobby of a tatty convention centre for a postdoctoral conference and ended up in a minimalist hotel overlooking Lake Geneva. Daniel never knew about Poppy. I was eleven weeks pregnant before I found out, and, when I did, I kept her to myself like a guilty secret.

  ‘This ghost,’ Alex shouts on st
age, his voice trembling. ‘This ghost is an omen. A sign that something is not right in our nation. Something troubles it.’

  I walk on past the guards, recalling – with a mild astonishment – months of sleeping on friends’ spare mattresses throughout my pregnancy, in case my mother – in the thick of her own psychosis – harmed the baby; then the birth; Poppy’s small, creamy face presented to me in the nurse’s arms, as if she was closing her eyes against bright sunlight; bringing her home to my new student flat, both of us curling up each night in a small bed against the window; Edith, the eccentric old spinster downstairs who swept the stone stairwell of our apartment block every single day, offering to look after Poppy while I finished my studies; the first day I noticed something was wrong with Poppy. Not wrong; different. It was the day Edith said she couldn’t look after Poppy any more.

  ‘Why?’ I asked at the time.

  Edith’s brown eyes had always sparkled when I dropped Poppy off at her apartment, but lately her expression at the door had grown troubled, hesitant to receive my daughter. At my question, Edith’s eyes lowered, her mouth searching for words.

  ‘She killed one of my fish,’ Edith stuttered, blinking back tears of disbelief. I thought of the large tropical fish tank Edith kept in her small sitting room, filled with small blue flecks and large purple swirls that looked like ribbons, but which Edith had told me proudly were Japanese fighting fish.

  ‘Swiped him clean out of the tank, like a cat,’ Edith continued, her lips trembling. ‘Watched him gasp for air on the sideboard.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said, horrified. I turned to Poppy, who was standing by my side, so easily bored that she was already doing a little dance and tugging my arm to leave. I bent down and cupped her small chin, turning her face to mine. I could see Daniel’s face in hers, that high forehead, the dark curls bouncing off her shoulders.

  ‘Poppy, tell Edith you are very sorry and we will buy her a new fish.’

  Poppy rolled her eyes away from mine and continued to dance and bounce on the spot. Edith shook her head at me gravely, folding her arms. ‘There’ve been other things,’ she said. ‘Small things, but strange …’ Her eyes darted down at Poppy as if she was something unclean.

  ‘She’s only three years old,’ I reasoned, pulling Poppy away from Edith’s legs. She was pretending to claw at her now, snarling and laughing.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Edith had stepped backwards into the darkness of her hallway, closing her door for good.

  I remember, now, that Poppy had never apologised.

  ‘That it should come to this …’

  I glance at Alex on stage, noticing that he has managed to keep his body facing the audience while addressing his fellow actors, his dialogue crisp and clear. I look down at the white hem of my dress bunched tightly in my fists, realising that now, in my forties, I am finally living a normal life. A life without excuses for Poppy’s behaviour. A life without apologies to the parents of Poppy’s classmates who sobbed after she lashed out, pleas to countless GPs to find the right treatment, rejection after rejection to potential lovers because my daughter needed a stability that a new relationship would rupture. A life without Poppy.

  And, to my horror, a part of me is relieved.

  When the first scene ends, a sudden burst of applause startles me out of the past and back into the room. I give a small jump, holding my hands up as if I’ve just landed in my seat. Michael turns to me.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The stage clears, the orchestra picking up the theme tune as the wedding procession of Claudius and Gertrude begins to roll from the wings. I rose to my feet. ‘I think I just need some fresh air.’

  I make my way towards the exit, past the handbags and bent legs in the pew, through the doors to the stairwell, then taking the steps two at a time to the foyer downstairs. I ignore staff who ask if I want to buy snacks and souvenirs, pushing past a queue bristling at the ticket desk. Outside, I take off my shoes, relieved by the feel of the cold, wet pavement, the indifference of loud, busy traffic. I walk a little distance away from the front doors and lean my head against the cool wall.

  ‘Anya?’

  I turn to see Michael at the entrance, his navy suit jacket blowing open in the wind. He strides stealthily towards me.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ His face is creased in concern. I turn away, anxious for him to leave. I don’t want to have to explain myself and lying makes me fidgety. I fold my arms.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, turning back to him and forcing a smile. ‘I just felt a bit hot, that’s all.’

  He nods, but the look of concern in his eyes doesn’t fade. There is a moment where he should get the hint and go back inside. He decisively doesn’t.

  ‘Alex was great, wasn’t he?’ He grinned, plucking at the thin straws of conversation. I try to return his enthusiasm, but before I can speak I feel a sob form in my throat and my eyes well up. I raise a hand, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I mutter. ‘Really. Go on, you’re missing the show.’

  I glance out at the traffic, relieved by the sweep of cold air thrown up by the stream of cars, the lights of the Opera House dancing on each new shining vehicle. Michael is still standing there, both hands at his sides, watching me. I can make out the lines under his eyes, the slight fuzz of grey stubble around his jaw. I go to say please, but he steps forward. I look up, startled by the pain in his eyes. Without a word, he lifts a hand to my cheek. His thumb gently and deliberately rests across the scar inflicted by Poppy. I search his eyes, wondering what he is doing. It is as if he has ventured as close to the line I have drawn between our professional relationship and an intimate relationship as he possibly can. He doesn’t move to kiss me, doesn’t speak. He just holds his hand there, his eyes intense, burning into mine.

  After a few moments he lowers his hand and walks back inside.

  17

  ‘REMEMBER ME’

  Alex

  Dear Diary,

  I did NOT do this to myself, but everyone here thinks I did and I am really fed up. I don’t know what happened. I feel so muddled and weird. Ruen wasn’t around at the time and all Bonnie did was scream. An ambulance came and carried me out in a stretcher. There were lots of people in the street but also lots of demons.

  All the doctors at the hospital kept asking me, ‘Alex, did you do this to yourself? Did you throw yourself up against the wall? Did you punch yourself in the face?’ and so on, and then when I wouldn’t answer they asked me why I did it.

  But something even weirder happened tonight, right when I was on stage.

  I’ll start at the beginning. It was like the craziest day all day in rehearsals, or I guess not all day but for about three hours before the curtain was going to come up and Jojo was getting sweaty and swearing a lot and everyone kept forgetting their lines. Katie didn’t show up and everyone was worried and finally Jojo sat us down and told us Katie had had an accident and Aoife would be playing Hamlet. I thought about what Ruen had asked me to do to Katie’s mum and felt bad for a moment. He was right. And if I had’ve done what he said, Katie would have been OK.

  Then Jojo found out that a casting director was coming, which made her even more stressed out. ‘Her name is Roz Mardell,’ she kept saying, in case we met her and didn’t call her by the right name which would be embarrassing, Jojo said. ‘If she comes up to you, you shake her hand and compliment her on her outfit and mention that you would love to do a camera audition.’ She fanned herself as if she might pass out. ‘One of you could end up in a film!’

  I looked in the mirror in front of me. How amazingly cool would that be? I thought, and I decided right then that I totally would act in films like all Jojo’s famous friends and when I was really famous I would come back to Belfast and run a theatre company for kids, just like Jojo. But then I had a sinking feeling, as if a pit of quicksand had landed on my chest. There was no way I could ever end up in a film. I was just Alex from Belfast with a crazy mum.

&nb
sp; Jojo made us all sit in a circle on the stage with our legs crossed and our hands on our knees and chant ‘Um’, which made me forget the sinking feeling and I started to giggle. Then Liam changed the chant to ‘Dumb’ and someone else said ‘Rum’ and then it became ‘Bum’, and everyone laughed.

  Jojo said she’d hired professional make-up artists and technicians for the night, which really made it all feel real, and then when the orchestra turned up I felt sick with excitement. I know there was over twenty of us in the play but somehow I couldn’t get it into my head that I was a part of something so cool. I had this feeling for a moment as if a warm wave of seawater had just passed over me, as if everything was going to be all right.

  And then a second later it was as if another wave washed over me but it was icy cold and I had a thought in my head: What if it all goes wrong?

  It was just after that thought that I saw Ruen. He was the Old Man then, strutting around the front of the auditorium looking over a big black piano that someone had just wheeled in. I could tell he really loved this one because he kept looking inside it at the strings and running his horrible hands up and down the keys.

  When the curtain went up all the nervousness left me. I closed my eyes and told myself I am Horatio, and then I forgot about all the stuff that had happened before. I lowered my voice and thought of the way Jojo said Horatio would speak and how important he was at the end in continuing Hamlet’s story.